James Benn - Rag and Bone

“I knew you guys would get it sooner or later,” Big Mike said. “Being officers, you were bound to. How about you buy the next round?”

“Aren’t you driving us to Dover tonight?”

“In this pea soup? No way. I’ll sleep on the couch in your fancy hotel, and we’ll leave at first light. Sam will never know.”

“You’re the boss, Big Mike.”

After the next round, we decided to detour back to Eddie’s place, figuring that we might have missed something the first time. Scotland Yard would have tossed the place by now, but maybe they were looking at things the way we had: that everything Sheila did was about her work for Brown and MI5. Even after a few drinks, three pairs of eyes might see something new. The fog was lifting, but navigating in the blackout made for a slow trip across the Thames and through the twisting side streets of Camberwell. A railroad bridge crossed the main thoroughfare, where a large antiaircraft gun lifted its steel nose into the foggy night. I could see the faint red glow of two cigarettes where the crew leaned against the railing, relaxing under the dark gray cover. Were they bored, I wondered, when the lonely quiet hours stretched out before them? Did they prefer the excitement, tinged with a chance of death, which a raid brought? As we drove under the bridge, one of them flipped his butt out into the night, the fiery sparks arcing into darkness. Odd, I thought, the choices that war presents us. The slow passage of time, or the thrill of dancing with death. Everyone wanted to live, but when the minutes and seconds crawled into the small hours of the morning, the speed and decisiveness of combat had an allure that it lacked in the daylight.

We found Penford Street and Eddie’s place. The front door was locked tight, but the back door gave way easily after Big Mike worked his knife blade into the latch and put his weight behind it.

“Back doors are always easier,” Big Mike said, as Kaz flipped on the light switch in the rear hallway. “Now, what exactly are we looking for?”

“Nothing,” I said, walking into the kitchen and turning on the overhead light. “Don’t look for anything. Look at what’s here.”

“Billy, perhaps my English is not up to the distinction,” Kaz said. “What are you talking about?”

“The biggest mistake you can make in a search is to expect to find something that shouldn’t be there. It can blind you to common objects that might mean something. Since we don’t know what we’re looking for, don’t look too hard. Just look at what’s here.” I could almost hear my dad drumming that into my head, over and over again, back when he used to pull me in as a uniform to help at a crime scene. The overtime was nice, but what he was really doing was teaching me an advanced course in homicide investigation. The problem was, I thought I already knew it all, and his lectures left me bored. Now it seemed to be such a simple, obvious truth, to not look for anything when you were looking for something.

“This kitchen is a mess,” Kaz said, keeping his opinion about the Boyle wisdom to himself.

“Pretty much like we left it,” Big Mike said. “Looks like the Scotland Yard boys pulled out a few drawers and fished around, that’s about it.” He was right. The cut-up oleander was dried out, and flies buzzed around the spilled sugar. Dirty dishes were piled in the sink, and cooking utensils were scattered over the counter.

“There is a third reason,” I said. “Sheila was never coming back to this place.”

“Just because she’s a lousy housekeeper?” Big Mike said. “I’ve seen plenty places worse than this dump.”

“No. Because she left the evidence out where we could find it. The cut-up oleander. She didn’t even try to hide it, or clean up the sugar. When’s the last time you saw a Londoner waste sugar like that? I don’t think she cared what anyone found here, which may also mean she’s assumed another identity. Or had assumed one as Sheila Carlson. If we ever find her, I bet she’ll be using another name.”

“Yes,” Kaz said. “It makes sense. The rest of the kitchen is neat and orderly. The disarray is all from her baking, and what looks like morning tea.” He opened cupboards, revealing stacked dishes and cups, nothing fancy, but well kept. We went through the rest of the house, following the cursory search that Scutt’s men had done. We checked pockets in the clothing that hung in the closet, looked on the underside of a chest of drawers, pulled records out of their jackets, leafed through books and magazines. Nothing. I sat at a desk, glancing at unpaid bills, advertisements, and an empty appointment calendar, the past and future now useless to Eddie Miller.

“Anything in the bathroom?” I asked Kaz as I wandered through the bedroom again.

“Men’s toiletries. A few patent medicines.”

“Sheila’s stuff cleared out?”

“There is a bottle of cologne, nearly empty, but not much else.” I looked around the bedroom. A small vanity was set between two narrow windows, hairbrushes and cosmetics lined up by the mirror.

“I think she hightailed it out of here with the cash and whatever she put in her purse,” Big Mike said.

“Yeah, looks like. Is there anyplace we haven’t searched?”

“We’ve covered every inch of this place,” Big Mike said.

“Except,” said Kaz, “for one thing. The dustbin. It was by the back door.”

We hauled the garbage can into the back hall, and dumped the contents out onto newspapers spread on the floor. It didn’t look or smell pretty. They’d dined on fish and chips not too long ago-Eddie’s last supper maybe? The cut end of the small cake she’d fed to Eddie. Damp tea leaves, moldy crusts of bread, a broken glass, crumpled newspaper, and various indistinguishable globs made up the rest. With rationing, not much in England went into the dustbin.

“What’s this?” Big Mike said, holding out a small stained and wet piece of paper. It was dark green, and looked as if it had been ripped in half. A number was at the top and bottom. It was hard to read, but the printed words said Railway, along with some smudged ink stains that had once been handwriting. I ran my fingers through the garbage again, thinking how often I heard that a detective’s life must be glamorous.

“Here!” Kaz said, shaking out the newspapers. He held the other half, this one dry and intact. Southern Railway. Ticket number 4882. London to Shepherdswell, via Canterbury. Third class, round-trip.

“Who went to Shepherdswell, wherever the hell that is?” Big Mike said. “Eddie or Sheila?”

“Impossible to say, but the Southern Railway goes to the channel coast. Canterbury is southeast of here, so it should be a simple matter to find Shepherdswell along the line,” Kaz said. “We could ask around. If it’s a small town, someone may have noticed one of them.”

“That’s on the way to Dover, isn’t it?” I said.

“Ah, the ever-elusive Dover. Yes, it is.”

Early morning found us on the road to Canterbury. We’d used the rear entrance of the Dorchester, since Inspector Scutt was on the lookout for Kaz. The blackout curtains had come in handy, and the kitchen had fixed us up with a thermos of coffee and cheese sandwiches for our predawn departure.

Crossing the River Medway at Rochester, we heard the heavy drone of engines behind us, and soon the sky was filled with B-17 bombers, hundreds of them, heading into the eastern dawn. It was a solid stream of aircraft, bomber squadrons forming up from bases all over southern England, coming together above us, painting the sky white with contrails and vibrating the air with their thousand-horsepower engines. Big Mike pulled the jeep over by the embankment, and we craned our necks to watch the air show.